Due to fear of trivializing the holocaust, leading expert on the Nazi Party, Ron Rosenbaum, has refused to address the similarities between Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump, but after the election, he felt it was time.

During an interview with Independent, he explains the rise to power in the United States and the eerie similarities between the Nazi’s rise to power and Trump’s administration.

The playbook is Mein Kampf.”

He later goes on to explain that the media had covered Hitler with so many exposés and news coverage that they normalized him.

Hitler used the tactics of bluff masterfully, at times giving the impression of being a feckless Chaplinesque clown, at other times a sleeping serpent, at others yet a trustworthy statesman,” Mr Rosenbaum stated.

Hitler demonized groups of people, blaming them for the socio-economic issues of Germany, but he worked tirelessly to silence and discredit the media while he preyed on the poor, the elderly and the disabled. He portrayed himself as a man of the people. People felt that the world had left them behind and that they could not speak their minds without offending someone. But, Hitler offered them hope as they were leaving a “Great Recession” and the economy was recouping from war. Hitler promised wealth, security, and a better life for everyone who was of German birth.

Sound familiar?

Once, I read “Mien Kampf”, and as I watched Trump during his election, I saw the same similarities, but I too stayed silent as I felt that we were better than this. We knew the signs — apparently, we forgot.

The Trump Administration was not the first to introduce “alternative facts”. Below is a passage from Mien Kampf.

All this was inspired by the principle–which is quite true in itself–that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they are more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort truth so infamously.